The Treehouse

My Needle and Thread have been...

busy stitching on LHN Needle and Thread! I've been itching to stitch this since it arrived a few months back and I determined last week to get started on it. Well, once I'd started I couldn't stop! I didn't actually have too much stitching time last week as it was 1/2 term but when I did get time this is what I stitched and I enjoyed every minute of it. I've also made a start on Blackbird Designs Snow Garden as part of a SAL...I want to get those lovely houses stitched and not have them sitting in my stash basket gathering dust. As you can see I did make a solitary, rather lonely klosje but at least it's one more to add to my total :D

 

There was a sale on at my LQS last week - it was their first anniversary of opening so I had to pop along and see what was what! I had thought to get some blue fabrics for the Clamshells and these are what I came away with...

 

Look at the cute kitty - I'm going to try and fussy cut her for the clamshells. Over in the far right hand cornder of the picture is a lovely blue fabric with some golden leaves in it, I almost cut it out of the picture altogether! I need to have a little visit to the stash because I recall a few blue fabrics from the last time I had a good tidy up in there. 

I've one more little task that I want to play at this month - Jenny's Jeans Challenge I knew as soon as I saw it that I wanted to make a bag...I think there are some dilapidated jeans in John's wardrobe that I can make use of so I think I'll go and hunt those down.

The weather is just awful here today - very humid and on and off rain...not a good day to have washed curtains and bedding at all, I've run out of indoor drying space and I fear that my hexagon stitching time tonight (cricket match) may be cancelled altogether if much more rain falls :(

 

 

Today's Blooms

I made 3 this week! No klosjes at the weekend but I did do a huge amount of cutting out so there is hope for a good quantity this coming weekend :) I've been having a lovely cross stitch the last few days - I got really behind with my various projects recently when I had a trapped nerve in my back - the pain was just too furious and nauseating for me to concentrate on a chart and count and my first priority as soon as thought was restored to my brain was to get Karen's birthday present made. I made good progress on Mary Wigham's wardrobe, started an Anniversaries of the Heart and now I'm enjoying a lovely treat by stitching up the LHN Needle and Thread pincusion bed and scissor keep...so cute, I love it!

Beautiful sunshine here today so hopefully we won't freeze tonight at bowling. If we're blessed again tomorrow we're going to head off for a day out somewhere :)

 

 

I bought a new Inklingo this morning - Clamshells. I was rather smitten when I saw the design done in shades of one colour, looks fabulous!

Crazy iPad Day!

We got a bit over excited about the iPad and were eagerly awaiting its release here in the UK. Now, ordinarily we don't rush out and buy something as soon as its available, we're more the 'wait a while and see if there are any problems' and 'let's think about it some more' type of people. Ever since we started buying Apple products though we seem to have gone a bit crazy - we just can't seem to get enough Apple in this house! We seem to have been awaiting the arrival of the iPad for a long time so...we decided that one of us would go to the Apple store today and try to get one. Our nearest Apple store is at the Trafford Centre and early in the morning there is a LOT of traffic in between us and the Trafford Centre! John set off very bright and early this morning to join the queue - the Apple store was opening at 8am. When he got there he found that quite a lot of folks had slept over night outside the shop :o There were about 150 people in front of him in the queue and happily he was home before 10.30am with our very own little iPad - we love it!

 

I'm not confident that the sharing thing is going to work in the long term though, lol!

While I was waiting for our new gadget to arrive home, I set too with my scissors and cut out many hexagons from the fabric that I printed onto yesterday and when my hands were tired of that I printed out more shapes for klosjes so I have plenty of spools and flowers to stitch now.

 

I've more still to cut out but I'm going to start dividing the hexagons into flowers next, I've already sorted some of the klosje pieces and pinned them together. I bought some of the green fabrics for the klosjes from the Garden Song range yesterday and I feel that they may have a future as a bag of some sort as well...they're really rather lovely.

The boys have gone off to a cricket match this evening, so while Catherine is catching is catching up with Sue Thomas FBI I've been having a play at making a crazy patchwork block - I'm joining in with Crazy Patchwork Friday I bought a book some time ago by Judith Baker Montano and had this on my list of things to play with. I wasn't paying too much attention to the instructions really so things didn't quite go according to plan.

 

I quite like the way it had turned out so far - it's needing some embellishments yet. The stitching around the outside edge is just a tacking stitch to stop everything flapping around when I come to do the embroidery and embellishing.

I'm going to be spending some quality time with Mary Wigham's wardrobe this weekend...that's the plan anyway!

 

 

 

Klosjes and Grandmother's Garden

We had a super sunny weekend here with plenty of outdoor activities. I did manage to get quite a bit of work done on the Bluebird block and am now on the stitchery part. Also managed to complete 5 more klosjes bringing my total to 7 now. 

 

This morning I spent a lovely morning chatting with Jen while listening to Tim Rice on the radio - we had stitching at the ready but there was no needle action at all :o After a spot of lunch, I've put together this week's flower for my garden :) I like them more with the smaller prints but as I'm using a jellyroll I'm committed to making use of the large prints as well. I have bought some large print with the bird on for a border...I think it will be quite some time before I'm cutting into that though!!!

 

 

  Scans today - it's pouring down outside!

Ready for the weekend...

 I like having a specific project to do on a particular day of the week and tomorrow it's time for Klosjes. I've got my shapes all printed up and ready to go. I also dug out a Bluebird block which has been sitting unfinished for ages. I began making it before I learned to applique the Piece O' Cake way and I'm not happy with how it looks so I abandoned it! This weekend I'm going to fix it and finish - well, that's the intention anyway. The children have a bowling match tomorrow so I can sit and stitch my Klosjes in the sunshine (fingers crossed) while watching them and perhaps on Sunday I can set too and get something done with the pretty Bluebird block.

There's another good reason for getting this block finished - the new Quilt Aid blocks are on Helen Stubbings' blog and in spite of having decided not to do the project this year because I've got enough things going on they're so pretty that I'm extremely tempted and I suspect that I will succumb! Maybe if I finish another couple of last year's blocks I'll allow myself to indulge :grin:

Catherine's birthday is today - she has become a teenager :o Sources have told her that with teenager-dom come bad moods, grumpiness and sarcasm. I've told her there's no need for any of that and to carry on as her usual lovely self :)

 

One Flower Wednesday with Harvest Home

I've cut into the jellyroll :o This jellyroll made a very lovely ornament on my shelf however, after some 2 years of sitting there I thought it was finally time for it to look pretty somewhere else...i.e. on our bed! I ran up my Inklingo 1" hexagon pdf yesterday and got some printing done. This morning I've sat and worked out what other fabric I need to get in addition to the jellyroll. I've settled on the blue shade after a lot fiddling about and am just now waiting to hear if there is sufficient available - I hope so because I'm not big on decision making, particularly where fabric buying is concerned and it takes me a very long time to make a final choice! 

Here is today's flower - I actually made it last night. I took my printed hexagons along to Matthew's cricket match with the intention of sitting and cutting them out. Well, I not only cut them out, I sewed together my flower. Hoping to get more printing done today and make a start on the next flower tonight - I'm looking forward to some relaxing stitching after the stress of having to plan and decision make this morning! :grin:

 

 

Saturday Klosjes

I can't resist this pretty fabric - it's Garden Song by Nancy Halvorsen. I first came across when I was looking for fabric for Karen's birthday bag and couldn't resist getting some for myself with the intention of using my Inklingo Dresden Plate shapes on it - I'm still going to do that but am using the scraps for Klosjes. I cut out lots of shapes today that I had printed off using Inklingo yesterday and managed to get two sewn up as well. Here they are posing with the 'just about to bloom' lilac in the garden.

 

We cropped today, well - I sewed...everybody else cropped! and I had drawn Karen in our birthday swap. I made this bag for her in the blues from Garden Song.

   

It almost didn't make it to the wrapping stage...I rather fell in love with it and I think Karen likes it too :) Happy Birthday Karen!

 
 

 

One Flower Wednesday

 I love hand sewing and I've been trying to resist but...resistance is futile! I kept happening across little Gardens growing on blogs and the need to grow my own Garden was irresistable. I had promised myself to finish off my Tail Feathers quilt before starting a new quilt...these are only tiny though and they're super quick to make with a cup of coffee so I think they can almost be overlooked as an altogether new project :) Here's my one flower for this Wednesday - would have been more but my preparation time went out of the window yesterday when school phoned to tell me that Matthew was poorly...one nasty 24 hour tummy bug later and he's back running around again I'm glad to say.

 

1/2" hexagons made the Inklingo way

Now to figure out my get out clause for starting on some Klosjes...I've been eyeing those up for ages. I think the reasoning is the same as for the Garden...they're small, they're a cup of coffee's worth of stitching and they're fun!

p.s I went out into the sunny garden to take a photo of my flower only to find my camera battery was flat...hence the rather uninteresting scanned pic for this week!

 

A bit of this and that...

Last night I was going to put some stitches in The Library and I was all set to go when I saw poor Geranium House sitting there...abandoned for months. I gave it some loving attention and it's feeling much happier now, lol! Looks much nicer now I've got some of the white stitched.

As I've been stitching away the past few weeks there have been a few things piling up that I've wanted to get done. I started printing out some Inklingo Drunkard's Path shapes a little while ago in readiness for a new quilt...one that I will not begin until Tail Feathers is done. I decided to get some more of the printing done this morning as I had the iron going already and I can just iron the fabric onto the freezer paper and set the printer off going happily by itself. I got two more shades of my Rouenneries layer cake printed off...this has to be the worst lot of 10" squares I've ever bought, not a single one is square so far!

 

While the printer was doing its thing - I made the little fabric basket. I saw these on Jenny's blog a few weeks ago and put it on my to-do list. Although it's now crossed off the to-do list I will be making some more, they're super easy and Jenny has a lovely little tutorial here. Next, I ironed and cut the fabric for my exciting Mary Wigham wardrobe project - the fabric is lovely (vintage country mocha) and the threads are even more gorgeous (Threadworx). I even managed a few stitches on Geranium House before it was time to pick up from school - a most productive day :D

Here's the finished basket with a little yoyo decoration and some lovely pieces of fabric:) (I might use stiff interfacing next time I think).

 
 I'm hoping to be in the mood to get the snowmen sorted out tomorrow...and maybe the binding on Matthew's quilt - it's long overdue and a finish would be nice!

Happy New Year

I'm a little late with new year wishes now that we're five days in to the new year! After one day back at school/work we find ourselves to be snowed in again! Schools are closed, salt boxes are empty, dustbins are overflowing and so we're having another day of holiday :D

 

and as you can see - it's still coming down thick and fast. The sleigh is being ridden but I'm staying indoors where it's all warm and snuggly and am going to fire up my sewing machine in a short while in order to work on my Tail Feathers quilt. The end is nearly in sight for this quilt and I'm so excited about that...just worrying now that I'll mess it all up with the quilting :o

Lots of sewing plans for this year and I had just finally convinced myself to take on no more new projects when I checked on Bunny Hill's blog this morning. There is a lovely new applique BOM full of snowmen, called Snowbound (how appropriate) just beginning and of course, I have downloaded the pattern!

 

I think I may squeeze it in somehow, I do happen to have some pretty white fabric that would be just perfect for the snowmen, lol!

I joined a SAL in order to get my Blackbird Designs stockings stitched now that I've found somewhere to supply me with small pieces of the fabrics used and have started the first one from the January set. I think they'll stitch up quite quickly and have enjoyed the sewing on this first one so far. I'm doing the one with the pink flowers on it first...very pretty.

 

I'm also in a SAL for the Little House Needleworks monthly ornaments and am awaiting the arrival of the second one - these are lovely to stitch although they do turn out quite large...good job our tree isn't a small one! Next year's Christmas tree is going to be decked out in a fabulous fashion is the stitching stays on course :D 

 

The last SAL that I'm in is for The Library, also by Little House Needleworks - I had that on my list of things to stitch and when I saw that there was a SAL beginning it was too hard to resist, lol! 

 

I really should make a WIP list I think as I also want to stitch the Beatrix Potter sampler. Reading that list I also need to stop sleeping as I've not even started to list my quilty things yet and that is really quite a long list. Good job I like to have more than one thing on the go at once really :grin:

I bought some Rouenneries fabric during the Christmas holidays - finally. I had been wanting to buy some since I first saw it but when I went to my LQS the lady there had decided not to order it as she wasn't keen on it. The need was too great though and I finally succumbed to a layer cake (it was a bargain price too so even better!) and am going to make Drunkard's Path shapes with it using Inklingo. I've never been keen on the Drunkard's Path pattern until I saw them in a different arrangement on Cathi's blog and then started giving them a little more thought. Originally, I was going to make octagons from the Rouenneries but now I have a whole new design plotted out in my head involving the Drunkard's Path. I'll need some yardage at some point so hopefully it will continue to be available for a while and in the meantime I'll enjoy sewing these little curved pieces together once I've printed them out.

I had been hoping that the postman would come today but that's not looking too likely with all this snow. I'm awaiting delivery of Jinny Beyer's new book, The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns from The Book Depository I had been waiting quite some time for Amazon to have it in stock but it still wasn't there just after Christmas so I went for a mooch on The Book Depository and there it was, just waiting for me to come along and order it up. 

This is quite a long post so it's probably time for me to go and sew now!

p.s. vampire book fans - see my Just Read list for some rather good vampire reads by Jennifer Rardin. Lent to me by my nephew over Christmas and both Catherine and devoured them in the space of 2 or 3 days, lol!